Thursday, June 09, 2011

Mandvi Shipbuilding


After a quick stop at a Jain temple, we headed south about 60 km (37 mi) to the seaport town of Mandvi. For hundreds of years, this principle port of Gujarat witnessed the departure of its famous merchant navigators to all ports of India as well as to far-flung places such as South Africa, Arabia, Malaysia, China, and Japan - bringing back great wealth. Even now, one can find massive ships being built by hand in much the same way as they did hundreds of years ago. With nary a construction safety barrier in sight, we were able to go right up to the mass of wooden ships and even up the crude ladder into its hull. Inside, we had the undivided attention of each of the young workers; they didn’t seem to be working that hard anyway.

 On the outside of the unfinished ship, one man sat on a suspended plank, patiently wedging in strips of thick cotton cord in the spaces between the wide boards of the ship’s exterior. Supposedly this was done to help waterproof the ship. In the shipyard, several men worked in the heat at a simple lumber mill, transforming a massive log from Myanmar into lumber.

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